Celebrating New Year's Eve with style in town - and on the beach

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - And so the last day of 2009 began with a three-hour drive to Puerto Vallarta (six hours driving, round-trip, of course) to visit Dr. Antonio who has been osteopathically wrenching on my neck, back and arm for several visits now to get a nerve in my neck to quit being, well, such a pain-in-the ass.

Or, technically, such a pain in the neck, I suppose.

But the visits are helping and so tonight I was feeling quite fit and ready for some adventure, So we roared out of town on the quad to Playa Grande where there were a handful of revelvers at the south end. Pretty quiet for New Year's Eve. We camped for awhile at the north end of the beach, however, our only company the occasional crab skittering across the sand, and the occasional swooping bat, feeding on the few insects that could stand the offshore breeze.


Admiral and her beloved steed

Earlier in the week, we purchased a quantity of very large sparklers - sparklers which every kid in the village has been coveting. And a few kids have talked us out of a couple.

But to bring in the new year, the Admiral took a few of her stash of sparklers out to the beach where we lit them off before coming back to the palapa to retire for the evening. No big parties in town tonight - the first such quiet night since we arrived, I think.

Of course, it might just be a little too early to make that determination.

Coconuts fly, trailer awning rips in the high winds

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - The winds have finally slowed down (at least this morning) leaving some damage around the Pink Flamingo.

The awning on the original Grey Goose Express let go in the high winds, though later inspection showed the awning was due for replacement anyway. More of a concern are the trees full of coconuts, perching precariously over our solar water heater. It's high on this week's agenda to get someone to scale the tree and get those aerial bombs down before they crack a water heater tube - or go through our roof.




In the meantime, Admiral Fox has been being a veterinarian to a neighbor's dog with serious anemia, skin disease, parasites and malnutrition.

The dog, named Capitan (Is there some irony here?) is improving dramatically with just four days of anti-biotics and good chow. The Admiral has been cooking chicken and rice to serve El Capitan and his buddy dog named Paloma. Paloma is blind, but can smell the food quite well and jumps all over both the Admiral and I when we arrived with comida.

The Admiral doses El Capitan with his drugs and food three times each day. Yesterday we gave him a bath, which the Admiral will likely describe in some detail in her blog later.


El Capitan - too weak to stand to eat at first

Our amigos Sanders and Pat Lamont arrived from the cold mountains of Northern California late Wednesday, meaning that a musical reunion of The Four Headlamps is in the wings for the two weeks while they are here. Last night - after a quick stop in La Manzanilla at Palapa Joe's to hydrate - we all attended a birthday party of neighbor Danni who turned 17. His family and most of his uncles, aunts and cousins came for a fiesta of tostadas and pozole. As part of his own birthday party, Danni put on a little keyboard concert and then had his birthday cake - complete with the cake-in-the-face-smash, perpetrated by his uncle Carlos.

We were asked to have The Four Headlamps do a number or two, but we begged off, hoping to get in a little practice before we attempt to make music in public.


Danni with his two cakes

Captain's Blog and Four Headlamps have a Wasilla connection

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - In my perusing of the site meters on the various websites where I post, I ran across that someone from Wasilla - yes that Wasilla - had taken a peek at the site, looking for, of all things, the lyrics to the song Chunder.

Chunder, if you ever look at the website The Four Headlamps, you know is one of the songs that I think the group will be adding to its repertoire.

The Four Headlamps

Hmm... I might have mentioned that song here already, now that I think about it.

It's doubtful that it was Sarah or Todd Palin who was looking at The Four Headlamps site. They seem to be pretty busy doing other things, bashing about the country right now. Still, considering how few people there are in Wasilla, there could be a Palin connection.

Maybe the whole Palin clan will travel to La Manzanilla for an open mic night at Palapa Joes when we perform Chunder.

They should have a lot of time on their hands after Nov. 4. And I'm sure the State of Alaska will not hesitate to pay for the governor and her family to fly south this winter on some kind of official business.


Sitemeter posting showing Wasilla

Rodney Carrington should sing some of these songs

POPLAR RIDGE WINERY, Valois, NY, USA - A week ago - before I succumbed to the stings of some nasty-ass, white-faced hornets (see yesterday's posting) - The Admiral and I spent a couple of great hours at Poplar Ridge Winery, drinking Cayuga White wine, visiting with neighbors and listening to cousin Brett Beardslee play tunes.

It was our third time at the winery to hear Brett play and the third Sunday that I imbibed a enough Cayuga White before we barreled home for the evening that I dutifully handed over the car keys to the Admiral.

Brett is an excellent musician, writing much of his own music, and playing an eclectic selection of songs on a variety of guitars, sometimes adding some harmonica work with it.

And late in such performances, he almost always drags out some songs that have lyrics that are, well, shall we say a little risque?

Risque? Well, maybe more like bawdy. Maybe more like: Did he really sing that?

Rodney Carrington - you should buy some of this guy's songs.

I made a DVD of an hour's worth of Brett's performance, but cut it down - a lot - to a short bit for this blog.

Yes, one snip falls into the risque and/or bawdy category.